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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122415">Grimtaash and The Littlest Princess</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatzaa/pseuds/skatzaa'>skatzaa</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Original Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alderaanian Culture (Star Wars), Alderaanian Diaspora (Star Wars), Children's Literature, Gen, Lost Literature of Alderaan (Star Wars), Planet Alderaan (Star Wars), Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:01:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,347</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatzaa/pseuds/skatzaa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia throws her datapad down on her desk, instead bracing her elbows on the desktop so she can press both her hands over her eyes until they stop burning and start aching. She breathes in deeply and resists the urge to scream.</p><p>It’s such a little, unimportant thing in the grand scheme of the galaxy. A tiny pinprick of hurt, barely even a mosquito bite in comparison to everything else she’s lost in the last decade-and-change. </p><p>But she’s shaky with rage and the sort of helplessness she hasn’t felt since she was standing on the bridge of the Death Star, watching her planet’s destruction, and she can’t stop.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Leia Organa &amp; Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Minor or Background Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Worldbuilding Exchange 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Grimtaash and The Littlest Princess</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/gifts">atamascolily</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Leia throws her datapad down on her desk, instead bracing her elbows on the desktop so she can press both her hands over her eyes until they stop burning and start aching. She breathes in deeply and resists the urge to scream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s such a little, unimportant thing in the grand scheme of the galaxy. A tiny pinprick of hurt, barely even a mosquito bite in comparison to everything else she’s lost in the last decade-and-change. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she’s shaky with rage and the sort of helplessness she hasn’t felt since she was standing on the bridge of the Death Star, watching her planet’s destruction, and she can’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>stop.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The door whooshes open. It’s either an aide, and she doesn’t want to make her staff uncomfortable or concerned, or it’s Han, which is the infinitely worse option. He’s been hovering like a damned mother stalking bird with a new chick since she’d told him she was pregnant, and she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>done</span>
  </em>
  <span> with it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No matter who’s standing in her doorway, she </span>
  <em>
    <span>doesn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> want to deal with them right now, so she doesn’t say anything and doesn’t pull her hands away from her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s silence for just long enough that she thinks maybe, </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe</span>
  </em>
  <span> they’ve gone away, and then: “Leia,” in Luke’s terribly soft and patient voice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was wrong. Having Luke find her is </span>
  <em>
    <span>so much worse</span>
  </em>
  <span> than any of the other options. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leia breathes in through her nose, and out through her mouth. It’s not the meditative breathing Luke taught her—it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>not.</span>
  </em>
  <span> It… just so happens that it’s very similar. One of her tutors, Tsabin, taught it to her a long time ago. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(If she’s wondered, before, if Tsabin had been a Jedi before the fall of the Republic, well… that’s neither here nor there, now. Tsabin was lost with Alderaan.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something shifts again, boots over carpet, just quiet enough that she knows Luke wants her to hear him moving. He’s so good at that and it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>infuriating. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Then: a hand on the back of her neck, worn and calloused and light enough that she could shake him off if she wanted to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kriff her, but she </span>
  <em>
    <span>doesn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> want to. Luke isn’t home—isn’t Alderaan and mamá and papá and every single little thing she loved about her people and her planet—but he’s the next best thing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leia shifts, pulling the heavy weight of her head up just enough that she can faceplant against Luke’s side. He lets out a low huff of laughter, hand tightening on her neck momentarily before relaxing again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s wrong, little sister?” he asks, teasing, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she </span>
  <em>
    <span>resents </span>
  </em>
  <span>whatever long-abandoned med droid he found that had told him he was born five minutes earlier. Or Obi-Wan Kenobi’s ghost; it seems like the type of thing he might tell Luke, based on what she knows of the man from her father and Luke’s stories. Either way, she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>resentful.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing,” she says, voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>feels</span>
  </em>
  <span> his disbelief. Stupid Jedi Force powers. She takes a deep, slightly stifled breath. “It’s not important. Really. I should be working on the reparations bill.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hadn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>meant</span>
  </em>
  <span> to get sucked in. It was supposed to be a short break, a chance to rest her eyes from the legal jargon of the Offworld Mining Corporation’s proposed amendments. But the frustration of not finding what she was looking for had led her from one HoloNet site to another, then to a forum for Alderaani parents, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>then—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Peace, Leia,” Luke tells her, letting her rest on him for another moment before he takes his hand off her neck and pushes back on her shoulder instead. Leia lets him, slumping back on her chair. Her hair is falling out of an already sloppy braid, and she must look so far from the always perfect Senator Organa that she’s almost surprised he isn’t laughing at her—or calling for a med droid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sinks onto his haunches beside her chair, hand holding the armrest though she knows he doesn’t need it to keep his balance, and looks up at her. He says, “What’s wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes a deep breath, tells herself it’s foolish to be this upset over something so small, and says, “I can’t find the right </span>
  <em>
    <span>folklore.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He blinks at her, just a little startled. It would be imperceptible to anyone but her or Han, and she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> thinking about that nerf herder right now. “What folklore?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The ones I grew up with,” she says, and blinks against the sting in her eyes as she remembers her mamá’s sing-song voice, the glow of the little lamp by her bedside, the weight of sleep and peace as she relaxes in her father’s arms. “Grimtaash and the Littlest Princess, the Killik and the woolly moth, the brave little night bird... There’s—I found versions from Kaamos, and from the Namin Lakes in the south—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But her people—her mother’s ancestors—had been from the Chros Mountains, east of Aldera. Her parents had taught her the Chros dialect of Alderaani, in addition to the more standardized version, and her mamá had loved to tell her the stories she’d learned from </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> mothers as a child. Those stories had been passed from one mouth to another, across generations, and now she couldn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>find</span>
  </em>
  <span> them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luke touches his hand to hers, gentle still, and says, “Could you not write down what you remember?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> remember, not really,” she says, and presses her fingers against her eyes once more. “I have bits and pieces, but it’s nothing like what mamá told me, I’m sure of it. And now it will be lost forever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luke is quiet for a long moment, and when she pulls her hands away from her face to look at him, he’s staring off into nothing, gaze vacant and sad. Leia reaches out a hand, touches fingers to cheek, feels the scratch of his stubble against her fingertips. He draws back into himself, giving her a slight smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know I’m working to start a school for Force sensitives, yes?” he says. Though she feels off-kilter from the subject change, Leia nods. “I’ve been to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and Ezra showed me to the one on Lothal. I’ve been to dozens of planets, I’ve scoured the HoloNet, I’ve even spoken to Ben and Yoda and the few Jedi still left alive.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leia nods, because she knows all this; she’s been the recipient of Luke’s infrequent and often absent minded comm messages for over a decade now, and she’s pieced together all the things he’s told her to guess at all the things he hasn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Despite all that, I will never rebuild the Jedi Order into what it once was.” And </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she knows where he’s taking this, doesn’t know if it makes her feel better or worse to know that she lost a culture she’d lived in and loved for her entire life, while Luke lost something he’d never truly had. “I can’t. Too much has been lost to reforge ourselves in the same image. But that doesn’t mean that the Jedi as a </span>
  <em>
    <span>culture</span>
  </em>
  <span> has been lost forever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows this. She’s been to New Alderaan, and though it hurts her heart to give her planet’s name to someplace that will never truly be home, her </span>
  <em>
    <span>people</span>
  </em>
  <span> are making it home. They are welcoming others who were devastated by the Empire and the war, and she knows that is changing them already. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leia cannot fault her people for changing as they need to, just as she would not fault Luke and the Jedi for adapting to the new state of the galaxy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know how annoying it is when you do that whole wise Jedi master shit? You’re thirty standard, knock it off,” she tells him, and he laughs, bright and delighted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stories Leia tells her child will not be the ones her mamá and papá told her. But she can teach them her culture, her history, her language, and she can help remake Alderaan anew. </span>
</p>
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